"The world owes a duty to the Untouchables to break their shackles and set them free, as it does to all enslaved people of the world.” Dr. B .R. Ambedkar

It was 1991, the Centenary Year of Dr. Ambedkar, the Chief Architect of India's Constitution and one of the country’s greatest Humanists in the twentieth century, when his Birth Centenary was celebrated at Columbia University, his alma-mater. We found a small opening at United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations to represent Untouchables as the Indigenous People of India along with Tribals. This was the start of the Ambedkar Center for Justice and Peace (ACJP) participation in United Nations for the next close to two decades through different human rights bodies including Treaty Bodies. This was also the first time that the Dalit issue came to WGIP.

1996 was a year for all Dalits to be proud of when the UN Treaty Body, Committee on Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), during its deliberation on India Report, for the first time questioned India, ‘how and why India failed to eradicate this heinous system of Caste-based discrimination and practice of Untouchability and what it must do to eradicate it’. In its Concluding Observations Report (CERD/C/304/Add.13, 17/09/96) Article 31 it recommended "..a continuing campaign to educate the Indian Population on human rights , in line with the Constitution of India and with the Universal Human Rights Instruments, including the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. This should be aimed at eliminating the institutionalized thinking of high-caste and low-caste mentality." After twelve years we are still waiting to see its full implementation.

This CERD Report of 1996 has been responsible for starting a debate in the United Nations in all treaty bodies.

In 1997 the Committee on Human Rights (Civil and Political Rights) endorsed the CERD Report and later added many recommendations to protect the rights of the marginalized, that is, the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (SC/ST), otherwise known as the Dalits, in India.

In 2000 the Committee on the Rights of the Child , during the India Report discussion, also endorsed the CERD report and added many recommendations to eradicate Child Labour, Bonded Labour, and Child Prostitution (Devdasi system), and provide free education up to the age of fourteen as per the judgment of the Supreme Court of India in 1996, in accordance with the Indian Constitution. India is yet to take serious steps in that direction.
In 2002 CERD invited India through "Thematic Discussion on Caste-based Discrimination" and in 2007 CERD discussed next India Report .It recommended many proactive steps to protect, and promote the interests of the SC/ST in the field of basic rights; dignity, education, health, national media role as well as full implementation of State laws.
In 2005 the UN appointed Prof. Yokota from Japan and Mr. Eide from Norway, later replaced by Madam Prof. Chung from South Korea, to study caste-based and work-based discrimination around the world and submit the report to UN in 2008 which has been recently done.

Finally after fourteen years and a lot of reminders by the UN, India submitted its State Party Report to Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) as a signatory to the Convention. ACJP attended Pre-Session Presentation in 2007 and discussed the violations of the Articles of the Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of Dalits and also lobbied in the final session in May 2008.

The ACJP, along with other international organizations, is finally succeeding in bringing the heinous practice of ostracism and untouchability to the attention of the international community through the medium of the UN. However, the struggle will continue in the foreseeable future, particularly since the Indian State has decided to treat this as an internal matter.

Yogesh Varhade is President of ACJP